Various materials of elongate sheet form are frequently stored on hollow core members as tightly wound rolls, and the rolls are rotatably contained within light and easy-to-handle containers from which the user may extract a suitable length and tear it off the roll as needed. Well-known examples of such sheet material include thin, clear plastic wrap to cover stored food such as fruit, vegetables and sandwiches, or thin aluminum foil for wrapping food for storage or during cooking. The dispenser is usually sized to be only somewhat larger than a full roll, i.e., one on which a maximum predetermined length of the sheet material is wound tightly prior to use of any unwound material.
The dispenser may be mounted at a convenient location, so that one or more users may obtain as much of the sheet material as they each need. More often, however, it is desired that the dispenser with the roll contained within be small, light, and shaped for being easily held in one hand with easy access to a distal end of the sheet afforded to the user's other hand, with the dispenser being formed to allow easy control over the length of sheet material being withdrawn therefrom.
The roll of sheet material often is simply placed into a cubical box formed by making various folds in a generally two-dimensional sheet of cardboard. An elongate slit or gap between adjacent or overlapping end portions of the container material provides an outlet for the sheet material being unrolled from the roll. An example of this is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 2,825,451, to Henry, titled "Dispensing Carton for Rolled Sheet Material."
A cutting edge, preferably one which has a serrated edge or roughened surface, is generally provided close to the slit or gap through which the sheet material is being extracted so as to enable the user to cause forcible contact between the sheet material and the cutting edge. An example of such a device is the one taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,590, to Ho, titled "Safety Food Wrap Film Tearing Device".
When the roll is simply placed inside a container, with no provision for positively stopping the roll, due to rotational inertia of the rotating roll itself there is often surplus material withdrawn and the user may end up wasting it. It is therefore desirable to provide a way to stop unnecessary unrolling of the material from the roll. Examples of known devices to accomplish this include U.S. Pat. No. 2,512,168, to Moore.
It is also desirable to prevent rotational recoil of the roll and consequential unintentional rewinding of the distal end of the material back on the roll. Examples of prior art addressing this problem include U.S. Pat. No. 2,857,046, to Klein, titled "Dispensing Containers for Sheet Wrapping Material" and U.S. Pat. No. 2,948,575, to Kallman et al., also titled "Dispensing Container for Sheet Wrapping Material".
There are also known structures in which the dispenser includes a pivotable cover which is generally biased so as to form an opening at a front edge of the cover, with the shape of the container being such as to enable a user to overcome the bias to narrow the opening to facilitate convenient application of the withdrawn length of sheet to a cutting edge provided along and adjacent to the opening. The cutting edge preferably has an elongate sequence of serrations. Typically, these can be contacted by the user and, in careless use, may scratch or cut the user's skin. U.S. Pat. No. 2,893,616, to Stell, titled "Web Dispenser", is an example of such prior art. Also known are dispensers, typically formed of folded thin cardboard material, which are provided with means cooperating with the open ends of a hollow cardboard roll on which the sheet material is wound, to rotatably support the roll substantially centrally of the dispenser body. Examples of prior art relating to such dispensers are described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,825,451, to Henry, titled "Dispensing Carton for Rolled Sheet Material"; U.S. Pat. No. 3,679,110, to Stine, titled "Cutter-Type Box for Dispensing Packaging Film With Protective Mounting for the Cutter"; U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,964, also to Stine, titled "Cutter-Type Box for Dispensing Packaging Film"; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,991,878, to Serio, Jr. et al., titled "Roll End Support and Dispensing Carton".
There is, however, a still unmet need for apparatus or a mechanism by which a user may very quickly and easily place a roll of sheet material wound on a hollow core into a relatively light, inexpensive, easy-to-grasp, and non-slip dispenser body with the assurance that the entire dispenser containing the roll can be conveniently held in one hand while the other hand has ready access to a distal end of the rolled sheet to allow: extraction of a desired length of the material, easy stoppage of the roll when the desired length has been withdrawn, ready limitation of an opening of the dispenser to ensure against ingress of ambient dirt and dust into the dispenser and to facilitate location of the sheet in relation to a cutting edge to facilitate tearing off of the desired length, protection against cuts and abrasions of the user's fingers due to contact with sharp cutting edge serrations during handling of the dispenser, and prevention of unintended roll-back of the roll so that future access to the distal end for further extraction of material is rendered easy. For reasons of cost, convenience of manufacture, aesthetic appeal and convenience of use, moldable plastics materials are the preferred choice both for forming the dispenser body and for other elements which must cooperate therewith to achieve the desired objectives.
The present invention provides various embodiments of such an invention, all of which meet this long-felt need, as will be understood from the following description with reference to the drawing.